Lavrov warned Germany against attempts to drag Ukraine into the Kerch Strait
Germany and France want to organize an expert commission that will monitor shipping in the Kerch Strait.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced this at a press conference following a meeting with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
According to the Russian minister, the head of German diplomacy brought the corresponding proposal to Moscow, and a preliminary agreement was reached during the G20 summit in Buenos Aires.
“This is a German proposal, we have just received it, we must study it. I can only say one thing: more than a month ago, Chancellor Merkel asked President Putin to allow German specialists to come to the Kerch Strait area and see how passage through this water area is carried out, taking into account that it is necessary to comply with safety standards. There is pilotage there and so on. President Putin immediately agreed,” Lavrov said.
He clarified that after some time, Chancellor Merkel asked that German specialists come along with French ones, to which the Russian side also agreed.
“But so far we have not seen any arrivals. And today Mr. Maas gave me proposals that somehow package this simple trip into a document that must be agreed upon with Ukraine. We said honestly - if our colleagues are interested in what President Putin promised Chancellor Merkel - this can be done today, tomorrow, at any time. If the idea is the need to put all this into some kind of political procedure, in which the Ukrainian side will also make certain decisions, then we risk finding ourselves in the same situation in which the Normandy format found itself with the Steinmeier formula,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov warned Germany against attempting to drag Ukraine into the Kerch Strait.